and it won t help the city or the workers. maybe get a read from dr. richard besser, the former cdc acting director. robert wood johnson foundation. happy new year. good to have you here. happy new year. nice to be here. same here. i don t know how happy or maybe it s confusing for folks when it comes to omicron. you said right in the earliest stages of omicron, you had a hint it would be contagious and spread fast it would not be along the delta variant wave. that still seems to be the case but it s still confusing to a lot of folks. what should they do in the face of this? yeah, you know, neil, you summed it up well at the by beginning of this section. you know, this is spreading rampantly, spreading quickly. but on the good news front, this is a strain that appears to cause much milder disease. that is good in terms of the
let me put that in perspective for you. when you compare that number to the peak of the delta variant wave, that is a 50% increase that they re seeing here. so, yes, that means long lines. lines that are anywhere from three to five hours depending at what time of day you come to get a test. listen to what some of the folks that had to wait in line told us. it s way more chaotic now. everybody is speaking out, but that s the same thing that happened right before the first shutdown. everybody is like going everywhere about it. how would you compare it? there s a spot right by my house where i would go. it would take less than five minutes. i would walk there. that s it. now the line extends on to the next street. it s crazy. so as a result of this increase in demand, today miami-dade county opened two new sites for testing. that s for on-site testing. let s talk about those take-home
but thankfully we have data from south africa, where omicron was first discovered. so we don t have to listen to anthony fauci. according to a brand-new study from that country, omicron has an 80% lower risk of hospitalization then passed covid variants. south africa s hospitalization rate even fell by 91% during the omicron wave. and less than 2% of all covid positive south africans were hospitalized. that is compared to 19% of covid positive south africans who were hospitalized in the third delta variant wave. health officials in south africa also added that the low hospitalization number is also inflated because even mild covid cases are now being admitted to hospitals now that they have the capacity that they didn t have before. here s one doctor explaining how mild the omicron variant is. with the curve, it sort of coming down.
the raging omicron variant. but thankfully we have data from south africa, where omicron was first discovered.in so we don t have to listen to anthony fauci. according to a brand-new study from that country, omicron has an 80% lower risk of hospitalization then passed covid variants. south africa s hospitalization rate even fell by 91% during the omicron wave. and less than 2% of all covid positive south africans were hospitalized. that is compared to 19% of covid positive south africans who were hospitalized in the third delta variant wave. health officials in south africa also added that the low hospitalization number i is also inflated because even mild covid cases are now being admitted toe hospitals now that they have the capacity that they didn t have before. here s one doctor explaining how mild the omicron variant is. with the curve, it sort of coming down. we were the epicenter, it is now
higher than our worst time in january. so everybody has got to brace themselves and get ready. i lay this at the feet of unvaccinated folks really generating this. i m not casting blame. i m just saying it s causal. july 4th weekend everyone went out because the camelot feeling was there, felt like we could get back to normal. unvaccinated folks represented 65% of the population in the southeast, and the delta variant was lurking, jumped in, sparked a flame. now that flame is a wildfire. i want to play something. this is a sound bite that came in from the acting mayor of boston. i want to make sure i have the context of this right. the acting mayor of boston, massachusetts, kim janey on tuesday likened requiring proof of a covid vaccination to slave papers and birtherism. let me play a sound bite from this mayor. during slavery, post slavery, as recent as what the immigrant